A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,57

said there was a bit of magic crafted with it.”

Swallowing a surge of grief, Vanessa looked longingly at the coffin behind her. “I suppose I should have given it to you. I just thought…Well I wanted to return it to its rightful owner.”

The corner of his mouth tilted, and for a moment she thought she might burst into tears.

“That is good of you.” He hesitated, drawing a hand through his mane in an attempt to tame it. “It’s freezing out. Might I invite you in for some warm tea?”

She shook her head, needing to lick her wounds. Unwilling to have to look at him in the brilliant winter sun. “Oh. I don’t want to take up any of your—”

“Please,” he murmured, capturing her hand. “It’s a rather large castle, and it’s just me, now. The last de Lohr…well of my line, anyhow. You’d be doing a solitary man a kindness on Christmas.”

She swallowed a spurt of pity and called it ridiculous. He was one of the most eligible bachelors in the Empire. If he wanted companionship, he’d only have to crook a finger.

“I’m no sort of company,” she argued. “And not someone you’d want to be seen socializing with, besides.”

The tiniest hint of an azure flame flared behind his eyes, causing them to glow like black sapphires in the dark. “I’m a de Lohr. I do as I fucking wish.”

Worry crimped her forehead. “Perhaps you haven’t heard about me.”

“Oh, I heard,” he said meaningfully. “I saw the pamphlet that blackguard, Woodhaven, passed around my club.” His voice took on a savage bite to match the ferocity of his features. “I burned them all and got his bloody membership revoked.”

She smiled at that. “Well…maybe one cup of tea.”

He took up her lantern and turned away, so she followed his shoulders up the stone steps, blinking against the brightness of the morning.

Which was why she bumped into him.

It was like running into a boulder.

Jostled by her, he dropped the ring, and it rolled between his feet as he took a few steps before he realized.

Vanessa bent to pick it up, and a snowflake landed on the tip of her nose as she straightened. She blinked and looked around, mesmerized by the drifting crystals of frost dancing toward the earth. It was as if the sky had released little diamonds, and they’d chosen to land in the Lioncross gardens, adorning them with indescribable wealth.

“Odd,” he remarked, tilting his neck up. “It wasn’t snowing when I followed you down here. In fact, it was a clear morning.”

Something gripped her at the sight of his throat arched to the sky. Something both foreign and familiar, and she cleared her throat to dislodge any gathers of emotion and the odd impulse to fall upon it like a vampire.

“Here,” she offered, taking the ring between her thumb and fingers and reaching for his hand.

He looked down at her and relinquished his hand to her grip. It was so similar to the one she’d become acquainted with, she thought she might expire. A few different marks and calluses, but nothing remarkable enough.

She slid the ring over his knuckles.

A perfect fit.

She wanted to rip it off again. To claim it for her own. Because it didn’t belong to him, this man with the empty eyes and kind, familiar smile. It belonged to John. Her John. The ghost who’d been somehow more full of life than even this magnificent specimen of a man.

She wanted to go back down into the crypt and sit with his bones. She wanted to go back to Scotland and sleep in the bed she’d shared with him. And mourn. Wail. Cry.

She knew it was pathetic, and she couldn’t bring herself to care, because he was gone. She could feel not only his body but his soul missing the moment she’d awoken after the solstice.

Perhaps he was finally at rest.

“Vanessa.”

She jumped at the sound of his voice. Looked up into his face.

His face.

The hollows had disappeared and…the eyes! The eyes were the same. No longer a grey/ blue but sharp with that familiar larkspur brilliance.

His name escaped her on a choked whisper.

John.

She jumped into his arms and he caught her against his chest, sweeping her around in the cheerful flurry before setting her back down.

“How is this—? What are—? Is he still—?” She couldn’t seem to finish a sentence, she was too incandescently happy.

He put his hand to his temple and then threaded it through his hair, testing locks much shorter than his had been. “It